Politician defends controversial fishing method: Critics “run around like headless chickens”

This is a discussion post. The post is an expression of the writer’s own position.

Our fishermen have ended up in a completely unjustified storm, where politicians run around like headless chickens and denigrate the bottom trawl fishing method.

Ignorant politicians who have never set foot in reality have seen themselves angry at bottom trawling.

They have no prerequisites to know anything regarding fishing, and therefore it surprises me that they want to completely ban bottom trawling with their heads under their arms.

After all, 90 percent of what is caught in Danish fisheries is caught using bottom fishing methods.

My question to the unrealistic politicians is: When the fishermen trawl the same places year following year, and there are still plenty of fish, how can it be as terrible as you claim?

Fishing is a profession that is often under heavy attack. Usually completely unjustified.

Most recently, the European Commission proposed to ban all bottom trawling – but that’s completely unreasonable, if you ask me.

Scare campaign

For me, it is crucial that the legislation makes sense and is based on reality.

The same obviously does not apply to the left-wing politicians who in recent weeks have toured the country’s newspapers with the message that bottom trawling must be completely banned.

Let me make one thing very clear, so that even unrealistic big-city politicians are on board: It is completely absurd to compare bottom trawling with plowing a field.

I have spent countless hours visiting all the ports in Denmark, talking to the fishermen, seeing the tools and trying to understand. Although I am far from understanding it all, it is clear to me that the left wing’s scare campaign once morest fishing is largely regarding ignorance or perhaps just an unwillingness to understand the difference between bottom trawling and beam trawling.

It can also quickly come to sound almost the same when you pronounce it, but there is one extremely important difference in particular; boom trawl is an iron boom that plows across the seabed – and that is not exactly beneficial for the marine environment.

We can agree on that – but beam trawling is largely not used in Denmark. Bottom trawling, on the other hand, is a completely different fishing technique, which is much gentler on the bottom.

The two methods are rude to compare.

The fishermen must join the table

Of course, we must continue to develop innovative fishing gear so that we can fish even more gently.

I am confident that the fishermen will be able to figure that out.

They are extremely development-oriented, and they have the greatest interest of all in a good marine environment.

I will continue to insist that legislation must make sense and be rooted in reality. And then it is only fair that the fishermen should sit at the negotiating table so that their expertise is heard.

This kind of crazy policy, like wanting to completely ban all bottom trawling, cannot just be pulled over people’s heads without them at least being heard and involved in the process. While we must of course look following nature – we must also have respect for the consequences that a ban will inflict on the fishermen.

Frankly; it is the fishermen who ensure every day that we can have healthy, nutritious and climate-friendly fish on our plates. We should start showing them some respect and gratitude rather than letting unrealistic big city politicians paint scary pictures regarding a catching method they neither can nor will understand.

2024-02-17 07:06:14
#Politician #defends #controversial #fishing #method #Critics #run #headless #chickens

Leave a Replay